


Incorrigible

by winterswept



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: "Pretend we're not dating", + a little meta genre bullshit, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Road Trip, but for like me personally not the characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22124650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterswept/pseuds/winterswept
Summary: Numair lifts his head as Daine approaches, his eyebrows raised in a question. She isn’t supposed to know him; is something up?
Relationships: Numair Salmalín/Veralidaine Sarrasri
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

For reasons unexplained, Daine and Numair are on the road in the guise of common travelers, and it’s imperative that no one in their camp find out that they’re together.

Although, really, Daine wonders . . . is it truly “imperative”? They’ve found their way out of more than a few nasty predicaments before. They’re quick on their feet; if they’re found out, well, they’ll find their way out. And if Numair weren’t just so enjoyable a man to tease . . .

She catches him in the early morning as he stands next to his bedroll, still shirtless. A few of the other men strewn in bedrolls nearby are half-dressed as well, each at their own point in the daily routine of waking, and stretching and yawning, and unfolding, and sitting up straight, and then finally, when it becomes clear that returning to sleep is no longer a viable option, standing and heading over to the latrine or the cook-fire. A constellation of bodies on the ground in various states of wakefulness, most wakeful and chattering, and none of interest to her but the one.

Numair is rummaging in his pack when she strides over, her eyes locked (as they shouldn’t be) only on him. Their plan had been to act indifferent to one another, enduring benign neglect for as long as it took for their group to reach their destination. Now Numair lifts his head as Daine approaches, his eyebrows raised in a question. She isn’t supposed to know him; is something up?

Daine comes to a stop a touch closer to him than a stranger would. “The girls’ camp bet me a copper to come talk to you. We gathered you’re shy. A pity for a man of your looks, or so says Emmeline.”

He remains silent as he watches her, eyes hard.

“You might as well come over to talk with us, see who you connect with.” She reaches out—suddenly, now that her body is involved, feeling almost tentative again—almost—and presses a hand to the hard of his chest. “The Garazo say you can tell someone’s disposition just by feeling their heartbeat, for example.”

Numair keeps his eyes trained on hers as he reaches up to gently grasp her wrist in his hand and pull it back to linger in the space between them. “My people choose to wait until we know someone before we touch them.”

“Oh? And who might your people be, exactly?”

“That’s a topic for another time. _Mistress Casser_.”

Daine rocks back, smiling impishly. “Well, I could learn to appreciate that practice. The anticipation . . . ” Her eyes flick down to his chest, then back up to catch his gaze again. “It would amplify the eventual thrill, wouldn’t it?” 

“Are we moving toward a thrill?”

He breaks her gaze then, dropping her wrist and reaching a hand back into his bag to pull that sought-out item, his shirt, from his pack. He swings it over his shoulders and neck. “Because I think it’s about time for the morning meal. I heard Rudolphe is making pan-cakes.”

Her peripheral vision snaps back to her, banal details breaking in to deflate their tension. Bodies, grass, woods, cookfire. Rudolphe and pan-cakes. Gods burn it, he does this on purpose.

She scowls, pouting, as he trots off toward the cookfire without her. They don’t know each other, then, fine. For another spell.

______

He catches her next that night, when they have a chance to be alone.

Not for that.

“What were you thinking?” He hisses.

The tone surprises her. She’s unsure if he really is irritated, or just determined to hew to their prearranged rules.

“It’s so dreary here.” She hears the whine in her voice as he fiddles with the magic extending their camp’s protective spell. “We have another fortnight before we make it to Renton. And I miss you. I thought it’d be fun.”

He lifts his head suddenly so his face is next to hers. “And would you stop, if I said to stop?”

She starts. “Of course.”

He continues to watch her, searching her eyes.

(She likes this too, about him. He spends so much time thinking, sometimes he lets her have two turns.)

She speaks again. “Are you telling me to stop?”

______

His eyes flick down to her chest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This part isn’t fanfiction.
> 
> Perhaps as result, it also isn’t sexy.
> 
> I know this isn’t what this website is for. But if it’s not for what we want it to be, then what is it? If not a practice ground for real-life writing, then what?
> 
> I like sort of hate my wretched teen angst bullshit (below), where pretentious words try to cover up emotions and instead just dye them neon, spotlighting insecurities, becoming signal flares for future embarrassment. But here we go, anyway: this is who I am and so here we go—rhythm to dull the blade of meaning. Rev it up, here we go, here we go, here we go.

I feel sometimes like writing a story is just the lazier way to write the essay about what these characters mean to me.

And then I want to write that essay about my own story, to rip the themes out of the needlework and offer them up to you straight, like a cat with a dead mouse dropped at your feet. Here, here is what I’m getting at. Here, here is my heart.

This pairing is unsalvageable, in reality, I know that. (This is good; use commas and other punctual pauses to soften the blows). There is what we won’t speak of: Age difference, teacher-student relationship, and god, it doesn’t matter, I don’t need to list a third thing, it all would be different ways of saying the words Age Difference, fundamental incongruity, implied manipulation (purposeful or not), emotional abuse.

Anyway. Despite that one factor that makes Daine/Numair, for all intents and purposes, unsalvageable. A book series that will be rightfully lost on future, more culturally enlightened generations. A standard I can’t impart to future me’s.

There are these factors that make them not just salvageable, but indispensable to me.

Here are the threads. Here I betray the magician’s oath; here I pull back the curtain on the trick. Here I proclaim the life of the author; here I lay myself bare.

God, I’m insufferable.

The central tension of Daine and Numair. Here are the threads:

  1. Daine (short, young, naive) holds all the cards over Numair (older, very tall). 
  2. Daine is a free spirit, impulsive. Numair is ruminative, hurt, searching. Invariably wise, also invariably idiotic. He is thoughtful, too thoughtful, opposing and resolving Daine’s hastiness by countering it in full: A structural push-and-pull tension underlying the whole of it. Numair’s portion with more than a touch of irresolvable sadness, unexplained loss, backstory obscured. 
  3. Numair thinks (without thinking) that Daine doesn’t think, doesn’t worry, doesn’t consider things the way he does, until she says something so astoundingly true and succinct that you realize of course she does. She’s been thinking this this whole time. You judgmental idiot, you self-centered pig, you asshole.

  4. Numair says things that should be correct (“it’s imperative that we do this”); Daine questions the very fabric of the statement, the central point of the worldview, and by doing so she makes him do so as well.

    1. Wait. Is Daine as I imagine her a manic pixie dream girl? Jesus Christ, oh no. Oh no.

Well, shit. Unsalvageable, then, pt. 2.

Unsalvageable: The unsalvaging.

Jesus.  


  5. They’re both wildly into making the concept of consent explicit and will find a way to do so in every story. They will confer endlessly to make sure the blue they see is the same blue you see, dude. Even given their own layers of discrete lenses coloring the color at hand at each turn. They will spend a millennium asking each other: “What do you see? What is your blue?” They will spend a millennium trying to reconcile the unreconcilable, attempting to memorize each others’ edges perfectly enough that they can fit the puzzle pieces together and become one. 



Which is to say: They are constantly re-evaluating their own motives, laying their themes bare, revealing themselves to each other and to you. Cats with dead mice at your doorstep. Hello, look here: here is my ugly, ugly heart. I brought it for you, I dissected it for you, and now I offer it for you to take. And hope that though we understand these things differently, we understand them the same way. The cat, the wildmage, the man: they look down at the gift, then up at you. Expectant. And we wait.


End file.
